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Sitting in his Bloor St. W. campaign office, the Seneca College financial services instructor and former soldier is holding forth on his vision for Parkdale-High Park, the riding he’s lived in for 15 years — except when he’s shushing Heaver, his yapping miniature dachshund.

He’s wearing Chuck Taylors.

He spends an hour a day reading Byzantine history.

He greets constituents at their doors with the phrase: “Hi, I’m a politician. Do you want me to leave now?” — an intro he says gets lots of smiles.

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A Tory candidate in these parts has to have a sense of humour. It’s been a long time since downtown Toronto saw any blue. In the six federal ridings that cross Bloor St., no Conservative candidate has polled upwards of the teens in the past three elections. The last Tory to win in downtown was David MacDonald, who held a seat in the former riding of Rosedale from 1988 to 1993. The area is now part of Toronto Centre and held by Liberal Bob Rae.

With a few weeks left until Election Day, several repeat races between old Liberal and NDP foes are heating up. Others look to be blowouts. Yet Tory true-believers are still willing and eager to put their names on the ballot, just to defend their principles and the people they feel are under-represented — even if their hopes of winning are slim.

“I don’t give a crap. I live here,” Train says of the stiff competition. In 2008, Liberal Gerard Kennedy, now vying for re-election along with former NDP MP Peggy Nash, emerged with a 31-point lead over the Conservative candidate in Parkdale-High Park, where Train is campaigning.

“I run in the riding that I live in. And I don’t care about who else is.”

This is Train’s first push for public office. He agreed to run for the Conservatives because he was concerned about lack of engagement. “People are looking at politicians as distant and detached and inaccessible,” he says.

His campaign goal is to change that. “It means talking to people. Being in front of them.” It’s clear he enjoys forging connections in the community.

Why the Conservative Party? Train believes classic conservatism means “looking at the little things that help people in their daily lives.” The bedrock of that is a strong economy — jobs, innovation and infrastructure.

In Toronto Centre, the Conservative hopeful is first-time federal candidate Kevin Moore. He’s up against Rae, the former Ontario premier, who in the last election won 53.5 per cent of the riding’s support — 35 points more than the Conservative challenger.

At an unannounced visit to Moore’s campaign office, one staffer described the candidate as “unconventional.” His volunteers include people like Everett Collrin, a St. James Town community housing resident who lives on disability support.

Collin has great things to say about the time and effort Moore put in with hundreds of suddenly-homeless community housing residents after last September’s inferno at 200 Wellesley St., where Collrin lives.

“Kevin’s been nothing but a big plus for our community since he’s moved (here),” Collrin says.

Moore, a minister at a St. James Town church who heads up a community not-for-profit called City of Hope, shrugs off the “unconventional” label. He’s running for the Conservatives because they have programs to help people in need, like seniors, and because he believes strongly in fiscal responsibility.

For Moore, as for Train, running is about the importance of the process. “I believe that good people of all political stripes should run.”

Not all the downtown Conservative candidates are as open as Train and Moore. In Toronto-Danforth, NDP leader Jack Layton’s riding, the Star was not able to visit Conservative candidate Katarina Von Koenig’s campaign office. A staffer said she does not yet have one.

The staffer declined to let Von Koenig be interviewed in person “on the advice of my national headquarters,” offering instead to submit written questions to the candidate through him.

The Star did not accept. Most other downtown Conservative candidates agreed to be interviewed face to face, some with no advance warning.

For Train, it’s not all jovial community-building. Every day, he makes early-morning rounds around the riding to check for signs have been damaged or torn down. “Because I’m a Conservative, they have a preconceived notion of who I am,” Train says of the vandals targeting him.

His personal motto might help with that. It’s a Latin phrase that Train translates: “Let them howl.”

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